One of my pet-peeves is overpaying for food and beverage outside of my home - like the $7 can of beer I had at a "fancy" restaurant the other night. So ... while the example below is not specifically about health food, I will present how many of us overspend on coffee.

In the past, I was a Starbucks fan. Now, I rarely indulge. Candidly, I find the coffee to be extremely strong and bitter. Here's a home-brew versus Starbucks comparison.

Home-brew

My home-brew is either Trader Joe's or Costco coffee. Both are excellent brews.

Starbucks

This example is using a grande cup of coffee - approximately $2/cup.

Cost/Cup $2Annual Cost: $730 (1/day)Total Cups Annually: 365

Of course, I am giving Starbucks the "benefit of the doubt", because the number of cups is far greater for the home-brew. A true comparison would result in annual savings of $682 - (I felt bad for Starbucks).

Bottom-line is this: Using the $445 annual savings, you could prepare about 45 home-cooked meals. So, when people tell me that eating food with health benefits is expensive, I just laugh it off.

P.S. Okay, so you don't like that example. How about this? The cereal I eat costs $2.59 per box. I always have a $1 coupon. So, my net expense is $1.59 for a box of cereal. That's about .32 cents for breakfast. Add the fruit and milk that goes on it and you're up to .50 cents for a breakfast. As I said, eating food with health benefits is not expensive.